Connecting with God through poetic articulations of lived, embodied experience–engaging texts from the Revised Common Lectionary for Christian churches, other biblical and spiritual texts, and evocations of the divine in rituals and other public events–always accepting lived reality as a primary source of divine revelation and mystery.

Idols are not always objects. Like the Pharisee in Jesus’ story, we can bow down before our own attitudes and habits, seeing only our self-publicity, our own estimation, or as in his case, and maybe ours, his righteousness, looking down his patrician nose, thinking so well of himself that no one else counts in his endless internal census of who is good and who not.

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We too can assess others based on what they do for work, what kind of car they drive or home they own (or don’t), who they are, whom they love, their race, or where they or their ancestors came from, of course gender, or gender identity, ability, weight—aah weight! a whole culture overrun with judging bodies as fat, old, wrinkled, bad hair, with wrong breast or penis size, so much judgment!!!!

And yet I know few people who think so highly of themselves—certainly some in the public eye come to mind, with egos large enough to fill Yankee Stadium, and you want to think they are healthy but sometimes it looks like insecurity more than sanity—most of us carrying around some sense of inadequacy induced by Madison Avenue or bullied into us on playgrounds, in locker rooms or summer camps long ago.

All humans err but few of us want to be reminded of our sins or these days to so openly declare them like Jesus’ friend the tax collector; sin such an old-fashioned word in a world obsessed with tweets, instagrams, selfies, sexting, and well-rehearsed reality television where confession is intended to boost ratings and perhaps land a contract, at least a headline, for the one who tells all. Now it is Judge Judy absolving or assigning penitential rites.

Still Jesus comes again, reminding us that simple humility is not only wise but also divine—even if Caesar and his saplings of the day jeered as do those now who seek to trump common sense and dignity in a sea of denial masquerading as self-importance and power believing they now make the rules. If it were only human rules they might be right, but instead it is a more basic truth:what is pumped up must sooner or later come down.

People of means in your church help pay the bills, including salaries, and especially the pastor’s, and they are usually pleased and proud to do so, but conflict may arise when Jesus tells the parable of Lazarus and the unnamed rich man. What church, indeed what church leader, lay or ordained, would know the name of a beggar but not that of a rich man who either already gave funds to build the new addition (and where his name is on the plaque) or who is being asked to do so? But that is what Jesus does—leading us again to wonder what kind of leader he would be for our church? Could we afford a pastor who lives this way, turning the tables not only over in the sanctuary but also making it difficult, perhaps impossible, to buy new ones?

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Here again Jesus provides comfort to the slave, the sharecropper, the unemployed, victims of racism, ableism, sexism, xenophobia, and all other ways we divide people into those with whom we connect, those we see, those whose eyes we meet, and those we walk by, step over, avert our eyes as if to say we deny they exist, echoing today in the claim “All Lives Matter” in response to anguished cries of many that some lives more than others are blown away by bullets, thrown away by poverty, discrimination and privilege.

Privilege. That is what the rich man had, the option not to see Lazarus, not even to see the dogs who licked Lazarus, infecting his wounds. So we see what to do, emulate Father Abraham, bring those we “diss” and dismiss into our heart, make it the bosom of Abraham—and that is not only the work of the rich but also many, including me, whose privilege is not only wealth greater than most of the world but also whose skin color, gender, ability, age, weight gives us a leg up in the marathon of life.

Oh that Jesus, doing it again, holding the mirror up to see ourselves so we can decide which actor in the parable is us— and perhaps choose how to respond . . . today.